Monday, March 27, 2017

Today in History for March 27, 2017

March 27, 1513 – Spanish explorer Juan Ponce de León reached
the northern end of the Bahamas on his first voyage to Florida.

March 27, 1775 - Future President Thomas Jefferson was
elected to the second Continental Congress as a Virginia delegate.

March 27, 1776 - The British left Boston and sailed for
Halifax, Nova Scotia.

March 27, 1794 – The United States Congress and President
George Washington established a permanent navy and authorized the building of
six frigates.

March 27, 1814 – During the War of 1812, the Battle of
Horseshoe Bend was fought in Central Alabama. Andrew Jackson led a force of
Americans, Creeks and Cherokees against Red Stick Creeks which were led by
Chief Menawa. Attacking the Red Stick stronghold of Tohopeka on the banks of
the Tallapoosa River, Jackson's men killed more than 900 people. The victory
soon led to the end of the Creek War and the cession of 23 million acres of
Creek territory to the United States.

March 27, 1815 - Alabama author William Russell Smith was
born in Russellville, Ky.

March 27, 1820 - English admiral and explorer Sir Edward
Augustus Inglefield was born in Cheltenham, England.

March 27, 1822 – French novelist and poet Henri Murger was
born in Paris.

March 27, 1825 – During his tour of the United States, the
Marquis de Lafayette spent the night at the Gachet House in Lamar County,
Georgia.

March 27, 1834
– French explorer and mountaineer Pierre Gaspard was born in Saint-Christophe-en-Oisans,
France.

March 27, 1836
– During the Texas Revolution’s “Goliad Massacre,” on the orders of General
Antonio López de Santa Anna, the Mexican army butchered 342 Texas POWs at
Goliad, Texas.

March 27, 1844 – American general, explorer and Medal of
Honor recipient Adolphus Greely was born in Newburyport, Massachusetts.

March 27, 1862 – During the Civil War, a five-day Federal
operation began on and around Santa Rosa Island, Fla.

March 27, 1862 - A five-day Federal
operation between Middleburg and White Plains, Va. began. Confederate General
John Bankhead Magruder was known as “Prince John” for his rather flamboyant
approach to life in general and his uniform in particular. He was in charge of
forces on the Peninsula as McClellan’s Army of the Potomac was inching its way
toward Richmond, Va. In consequence thereof, General Joseph E. Johnston was
ordered from Richmond to reinforce him.

March 27, 1863 – During the Civil
War, skirmishes were fought at Palatka, Fla.; in the vicinity of Madisonville,
Ky.; along the Rio Bonito in the New Mexico Territory; and along the Woodbury
Pike, Tenn.

March 27, 1864 – During the Civil
War, Secretary of the Navy Welles sent orders to the USS Wyoming, docked in
Baltimore, Md. Her commander, John P. Bankhead, was instructed to sail in
search of the CSS Shenandoah, Lt. Waddell commanding. The last report of the
location of Shenandoah had her leaving Melbourne, Australia, and that report
was five weeks old.

March 27, 1864 – During the Civil
War, skirmishes were fought at Branchville, Brook’s Mill, Little Rock and
Benton, Ark.; with Indians along the Eel River in California; in the vicinity
of Columbus, Ky.; at Livingston, Miss., which was located 14 miles north of
present day Ackerman, Miss.; at Deepwater Township, Mo.; and at Louisville,
Tenn. A four-day Federal operation including Pine Bluff, Mount Elba and Long
View, Ark. also began.

March 27, 1864 - Several times
during the Civil War there were outbreaks of fighting against the government by
its own citizens who sympathized with the “other side.” One such occurred
overnight and into tomorrow in Charleston, in central Illinois. “A dreadful
affair took place in our town”, the local newspaper said, when a group of about
100 Copperheads attacked Federal troops who were home on leave. Five were
killed and more than 20 wounded before reinforcements arrived and restored
order.

March 27, 1865 – During the Civil War, Union Major General
Frederick Steele’s column from Pensacola, Fla. reached Canoe Station near
Atmore, Ala. and encamped.

March 27, 1865 – During the Civil War, Union Gen. E.R.S.
Canby, with 32,000 men, laid siege to Spanish Fort. The siege would last for 13
days.

March 27, 1865 - President Abraham Lincoln met with Union
generals Ulysses S. Grant and William T. Sherman at City Point, Virginia to
plot the last stages of the Civil War. Lincoln went to Virginia just as Grant
was preparing to attack Confederate General Robert E. Lee’s lines around
Petersburg and Richmond, an assault that promised to end the siege that had
dragged on for 10 months. Meanwhile, Sherman’s force was steamrolling northward
through the Carolinas. The three architects of Union victory convened for the
first time as a group–Lincoln and Sherman had never met—at Grant’s City Point
headquarters at the general-in-chief’s request. Less than four weeks later, Grant
and Sherman had secured the surrender of the Confederacy.

March 27, 1868 – Patty Smith Hill, who wrote the song “Happy
Birthday to You,” was born in Anchorage, Ky.

March 27, 1879 – National Baseball Hall of Fame second
baseman and manager Miller Huggins was born in Cincinnati, Ohio. He would go on
to play for the Cincinnati Reds and the St. Louis Cardinals and also managed
the Cardinals and the New York Yankees. He was inducted into the Hall of Fame
in 1964.

March 27, 1884 – German zoologist and explorer Richard Böhm
passed away at the age of 29 in Katapana, Katanga.

March 27, 1886 – Famous Apache warrior, Geronimo,
surrendered to the U.S. Army, ending the main phase of the Apache Wars.

March 27, 1896 - At the Monroe County (Ala.) Courthouse, by
special request, on this Friday evening, itinerant freehand artist Robinson,
the “Lightning Charcoal Artist,” appeared in “a refined exhibition of rapid
freehand drawing, introducing dexterous left and right hand sketches.
Portraits, landscapes, caricatures, etc. will constitute the program, and an
interesting and instructive entertainment is promised. To each person upon
entering the door will be furnished a chance in the prize picture. The holder
of the lucky number will be given a life-size, nicely finished portrait and
frame.”

March 27, 1896 - J.A. Grace, the proprietor of the Upper
Warehouse at Claiborne, visited The Monroe Journal office on this Friday.

March 27, 1899 - The first international radio transmission
between England and France was achieved by the Italian inventor G. Marconi.

March 27, 1904 - On Sunday evening, while he was visiting
the home of a crony, Alderman Gray, Whipple Van Buren Phillips, H.P. Lovecraft’s
grandfather, was seized by a “paralytic shock,” likely a stroke. He died the
following day, near midnight at his home at 454 Angell Street in Providence,
R.I.

March 27, 1910 – In Lovecraftian fiction, Edith Brendall
disappeared from Bonn, Germany and her body was discovered in the Rhine River
on April 4 of the same year.

March 27, 1912 – President William Howard Taft’s wife, Helen
Herron Taft, and the wife of the ambassador from Japan planted the first of
Washington, D.C.’s cherry trees, scions from the most famous trees in Tokyo,
the ones that grow along the banks of the Arakawa River.

March 27, 1913
– German SS officer Theodor Dannecker was born in Tübingen, a traditional university town in central
Baden-Württemberg, Germany.

March 27, 1915 – Conecuh County Sheriff Williams and Deputy
Davis arrested Finley Cowling near Brooklyn, Ala. for the alleged theft of a
horse belonging to Dr. M.M. Strickland of Minter in Dallas County. The horse
was recovered and Cowling was placed in jail.

March 27, 1915 – J.D. Skinner of Belleville, Ala. reported
that while traveling from his home to Bermuda a few days before he saw
“quantities of boll weevils flying about. If any great number come out of
hibernation this early they will die out before they get something to feed on.”

March 27, 1915
– Typhoid Mary, the first healthy carrier of disease ever identified in the United
States, was put in quarantine, where she would remain for the rest of her life.

March 27, 1916 - Author Catherine Rodgers was born in Camp
Hill, in Tallapoosa County, Ala.

March 27, 1916 – Allen Page, who had been appointed notary
public and justice of the peace at Castleberry, was in Evergreen, Ala. on
business on this Monday.

March 27, 1918 - In the wake of Russia’s withdrawal from World War I and its
acceptance of the humiliating peace terms set by the Central Powers at
Brest-Litovsk, the Balkan republic of Romania annexes Bessarabia, a
strategically important area of land located on its eastern border and bounded
on the south by the Danube River and the mouth of the Black Sea.

March 27, 1923 – Poet Louis Simpson was born in Kingston,
Jamaica.

March 27, 1927
– Explorer and biologist William Healey Dall died at the age of 81 in
Washington, D.C.

March 27, 1928 – Confederate veteran Thomas Smallwood “T.S.”
Hagood of Evergreen, Ala. passed away at the age of 80. Hagood was born in Bragg, Lowndes County, Ala., on June 30, 1847. He
joined the Confederate army at Dalton, Ga. in March 1863 and served with Co. I
of the 45th Alabama Infantry. Hagood was captured at Franklin on Nov. 30, 1864,
imprisoned at Camp Douglas, Ill. And was paroled on June 18, 1865. He was
buried in the Old Evergreen Cemetery in Evergreen, Ala.

March 27, 1933 – Football coach Vince Gibson was born in
Birmingham, Ala. He went on to play guard at Florida State and served as the
head coach at Kansas State, Louisville and Tulane.

March 27, 1943 - Author Perry Lentz was born in Anniston,
Ala.

March 27, 1947 – The Monroe Journal reported that W.A.
Hendrix of Monroeville, Ala. and Fred T. McClendon of Union Springs, who owned
and operated a circuit of some 30 theaters in Alabama, Florida, Georgia and
Mississippi, were having a modern new theater built in Frisco City, Ala.
Construction started that week and the management hoped to open in June. The
new theater planned to operate on a full time basis with the latest and best
movies.

March 27, 1947 – The Monroe Journal reported that C.E. Hart
of Flomaton, Ala., the owner of the Hart Sand & Gravel Co., was opening a
place of business on Double Branch between the creek and the Frisco Railroad on
the Monroeville-Old Salem road. Earlier that week a bin with a capacity of 22
yards of gravel had been constructed and sand and gravel washing bins were in
the process of construction. It was expected that two six-inch pumps would be
installed to pump the gravel and sand from the creek bed and the surrounding
area into the wash bins and from there to bins for sand and gravel, after it
had passed over the screens.

March 27, 1950 - Novelist and poet Julia Alvarez was born in
New York City.

March 27, 1952 – Truman Capote's stage adaptation of his
novel, “The Grass Harp,” directed by Robert Lewis, opened at Broadway's Martin
Beck Theatre, where it ran for 36 performances.

March 27, 1956 – On this Tuesday morning, the U.S. Navy
began using Middleton Field in Evergreen, Ala. “as a training field again,”
according to The Evergreen Courant.

March 27, 1956
– English cosmologist and academic John A. Peacock was born in Shaftesbury,
England.

March 27, 1959 - Funeral services for Oscar McNeil, 80, a
prominent Frisco City, Ala. resident, were held on this Friday at 4 p.m. at the
First Baptist Church in Frisco City. For many years he operated one of the
first mercantile establishments in the area. He was a director of the bank at
Frisco City and a deacon in the Baptist Church.

March 27, 1963 – Director Quentin Tarantino was born in
Knoxville, Tenn.

March 27, 1964 - The “Good Friday Earthquake” killed 131
people in Alaska. Lasting almost five minutes, it was the most powerful
recorded quake in U.S. history-- 8.4 on the Richter scale.

March 27, 1965 – A plane crash near the Drewry community in
Monroe County, Ala. claimed the lives of Reuben Ludger Lapeyrouse, 33, and
Keaton C. Hardy, 43, both of Mobile. A third man, Clay Medley Godwin, 22, of
Mobile survived the crash, but died a short time later. Lapeyrouse was the head of the Lapeyrouse Grain
Corporation, and Godwin worked in the office at Lapeyrouse Grain Corp.

March
27, 1965 - Following several days of consultations with the Cambodian
government, South Vietnamese troops, supported by artillery and air strikes,
launched their first major military operation into Cambodia.

March 27, 1969 – The Evergreen
Courant reported that six members of Boy Scout Troop 40 in Evergreen, Ala. were
inducted into the Order of the Arrow during the recent Alabama-Florida Spring
Camporee.

March 27, 1969 – The Evergreen
Courant reported that Spec-5 Lowell Jernigan had received the Army Commendation
Medal for Meritorious Service. Jernigan, a 1964 graduate of Evergreen High School
and later the University of Alabama, was an instructor at the Atomic
Demolition Munitions Systems Branch, Nuclear, Biological and Chemical Division,
Dept. of Engineering and Military Science, U.S. Army Engineer School, at Ft.
Belvoir, Va.

March 27, 1973 - The White House
announced that, at the request of Cambodian President Lon Nol, the bombing of
Cambodia would continue until communist forces ceased military operations and
agreed to a cease-fire.

March 27, 1976 – The first segment of the Washington Metro
opened, and some 50,000 people stood in line for hours to take a free ride on
the Red Line, which ran from Rhode Island Avenue to the Farragut North underground
station.

March 27, 1976
– NBA power forward Danny Fortson was born in Philadelphia, Pa. He would go on
to play for the University of Cincinnati, the Denver Nuggets, the Boston
Celtics, the Golden State Warriors, the Dallas Mavericks and the Seattle
SuperSonics.

March 27, 1977 - Two 747s collided on a foggy runway in the
Canary Islands in the worst accident in aviation history -- 583 died.

March 27, 1981 - U.S. President Ronald Reagan hosted a
luncheon honoring the members of the National Baseball Hall of Fame.

March 27, 1986 – The Evergreen Courant reported that State
Representative J.E. “Jimmy” Warren of Castleberry, Ala. had qualified to seek
re-election to the Alabama House of Representatives. Warren, first elected in
1970, was seeking his fifth term in office.

March 27, 1986 – NFL linebacker Titus Brown was born in
Tuscaloosa, Ala. He went on to play for Mississippi State and the Cleveland
Browns.

March 27, 1994 - Alabama, Georgia and North Carolina were
hit by a series of tornadoes that killed 42 people.

March 27, 1994 – A church
in Piedmont, Ala. collapsed during a tornado, and 19 people inside were killed.

March 27, 2001 – Stanley Guy Busby, 75, of Repton, Ala. died
at Monroe County Hospital. Busby, who ran a dairy for many years, was a driver
for Poole Truck Line and a retired CDL instructor from Reid State Technical
College. He served in the Marine Corps during World War II and the Korean War.

March 27, 2007 - NFL owners voted, 30-2, to make the video replay
system a permanent officiating tool.

March 27, 2012 – Evergreen, Ala. city officials presented
local basketball star Chris Hines with a special proclamation and key to the
city during a special ceremony at Evergreen City Hall.